New Dollar General coming on Forum Drive

Friday

Mar 8, 2013 at 4:00 AM

Paul Hackbarth

A vacant building on Forum Drive has been razed to make way for a new Dollar General store that is expected to be completed by late summer of this year.

Dollar General and Century 21 First Choice, the broker for the property where the store will be located, both confirmed plans this week for the new store to be constructed at 1441 Forum Drive across the street from the Rolla Towers.

The 1.47-acre property was sold to a company that develops for Dollar General in late December 2012, and work to prepare the site for the new building has started.

Michael Manley, agent with Century 21, said there was formerly a building on the lot that housed several different offices and had sat vacant for some years.

The new store will have 7,200 square feet of selling space, according to Crystal Ghassemi, spokesperson for Dollar General, and will employ six to 10 people.

Ghassemi said construction of the store could be complete by late summer.

An existing Dollar General store in Rolla, which is located at 1008 E. Highway 72, will remain open, meaning the company will have two stores in Rolla.

With an existing Dollar General store in St. James and another being constructed in Doolittle, the company will have four stores in Phelps County by the end of this year.

Manley also was the agent who sold the property in Doolittle for the new store to be located at the northeast corner of Eisenhower Street and Highway T. The store’s address will be 345 Eisenhower St.

The Doolittle location also will have 7,200 square feet of selling space and construction is expected to be completed there in early fall.

The two new stores on Forum Drive in Rolla and Eisenhower Street in Doolittle being constructed will be smaller than the other types of the company’s stores — the Dollar General Plus and Dollar General Market.

Dollar General plans to build 635 new stores this year and plans to create 6,000 new jobs in 2013, Ghassemi said.

According to Ghassemi, company officials consider four factors when looking at new locations for store.

“The first one is meeting customer needs,” she said.

“Research shows that our customers come from a three- to five-mile radius or a 10-minute drive, so convenience is a major factor.”

The other three factors considered are demographic information, competition and traffic patterns, she said.

The new Dollar General store on Forum Drive will be located just down the street from a Family Dollar in the Forum Plaza.